Answering the Sadducee

A Sadducee walked up to Jesus one day and asked Him, "What is the greatest of all the commandments? (Matthew 22:35)" No, this isn't a lead into the punch line of a joke. The Sadducee was quite serious, since he was testing Jesus. Of course, Jesus knew what the Sadducee was up to and provided a divine answer.

As I engage Christians of other denominational stripes, and even a few within my own Lutheran synod (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod), I often hear a shortened version of Christ's answer to the Sadducee, "The greatest of all commandments? Oh, that's easy... love." Often the critical part of Jesus' words is left off and perhaps are even unknown to Christians today venturing a guess as to how to answer the question posed to Jesus.

Luther answers the Sadducee in his Large Catechism where he discusses the meaning of the first commandment. The first commandment is "You shall have no other Gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). Luther succinctly writes,

“If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together, faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.” (LC, First Commandment, 3)

What is the object of our faith? Find that object and there you will find your "god." However, the object of faith for the Christian is the one true God. Without the true object of faith, then we have absolutely nothing. No God, no faith, zero.

Jesus answers the Sadducee with an answer that surprises those who stop short at "love" when talking about the greatest of all the commandments. Stopping short at love is to fail to include the object of that love. Indeed, it is a critical abandonment of the one who is responsible for giving us true love to begin with, since without His love we can't love (1 John 4:19).

Excluding the object of the greatest of all the commandments, which Jesus states as a summation of the first three imperatives of the Decalogue in His response to the Sadducee, is to have a commandment that almost anyone could agree with, be they Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, and perhaps even some of the most pagan of hedonists. 

Then there are those who truncate Jesus' answer to the Sadducee and give us the social gospel. These people leave God out of the picture and claim that the greatest of all the commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself. Hmm... is that what Jesus said? There is a large gap in the social gospel adherent's answer. Where is the object of the love? Where is God in the answer? Feeding your neighbor without including the object of the true faith, God, is not love.

Jesus answered that Sadducee and told him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38).

If we miss the first table commandments it is impossible to know what it means for the second table commandments to be satisfied. Really we can't understand what it means for Christ to fulfill the law if we chop off all the words after "love" where Jesus tells us what is the greatest of all the commandments. That is, we will not know that Christ so loves His Father, who loves Him, that He freely gave up His life on the cross for your sins and mine. Jesus perfectly satisfied the first and greatest of all the commandments, to love the Lord God with all His heart, soul, and mind. The evidence of Christ's love for the Father is His agony and death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.